#articleoftheday

26/03/2017 KNE

The Saudi-led coalition has been waging an immensely expensive war for the last two yeas in the southern tip of the Arabian peninsula. Yet the prospects for peace seem further away as ever. The Trump administration desperately needs to rethink America's Yemen policy.

The Saudi-led coalition has been waging an immensely expensive war for the last two yeas in the southern tip of the Arabian peninsula. Yet the prospects for peace seem further away as ever. The Trump administration desperately needs to rethink America's Yemen policy.

#articleoftheday

07/04/2017 KNE

It should be profoundly worrying to the Kremlin that a young generation that only knows Putin and Medvedev as their leaders is not able to be controlled by propaganda and willing to demonstrate against the regime. Nonetheless, 2017 is pretty unlikely to end up in history books as the year of the Russian Spring.

#articleoftheday

25/01/2017 KNE

Farah Diba, the wife of the last Shah, was an avid collector of modern art. Just two years before the 1979 Islamic Revolution she opened the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art - one of the first museums solely dedicated to modern art and the largest collection outside of Europe and North America. Berlin's National Gallery and Rome's MAXXI joined forces to show 61 paintings from the permanent collection in December 2016. However, things didn't really go according to plan.

#articleoftheday

01/12/2016 KNE

The EU referendum and the American elections have brought white working-class voters back to the global political arena. In the aftermaths of the two elections they have been blamed for making the decisive difference. Most strikingly about these elections is that this group's interests are very likely to be harmed by their votes. Yet they decided to vote against their traditional representatives. So what exactly went wrong? Where does the anger come from? And why has politics failed the white working-class so badly?

#articleoftheday

26/10/2016 KNE

The Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), the proposed free-trade agreement between Canada and the European Union, has been effectively brought to a halt by the regional parliament of Wallonia, the French speaking region of Belgium. Is CETA just as doomed as its more controversial brother, TTIP?

#articleoftheday

06/10/2016 KNE

Filipino president Rodergio Duterte rose to power off the back of his extreme strongman stance. This approach was reflected in policies that resulted in widespread extrajudicial killings in the region, accompanied by a lifestyle of Harley riding and gun toting, earning him the nickname “The Punisher”. Lay von Mann questions the Philippine's new foreign policy outlook.

#articleoftheday

15/09/2016 KNE

On September 4 the north eastern state Mecklenburg Vorpommern - Angela Merkel’s home state - elected a new state parliament. As many predicted the rightwing populist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) came second - winning more seats than Merkel’s CDU. Bild Zeitung asked “How many more electoral disasters can Merkel take?”. But was this really a humiliating defeat? And most importantly: how representative is the MV state election?

#articleoftheday

02/09/2016 KNE

Yes we can! Barack Obama famously used this slogan in his 2008 election campaign and managed to gather a huge momentum. Exactly one year ago Angela Merkel joined the Bob the Builder club and declared “Wir schaffen das!” at the government’s summer press conference. Both sentences were supposed to unite, yet neither achieved their goals.

#articleoftheday

31/08/2016 LvM

Owen Smith, current contender for the Labour Party leadership, recently made the suggestion that an inclusive approach to negotiation over Syria would be the best way forward. The inference here is that individuals representing Islamic State (IS) would be involved in future talks as “all solutions to these international crises do come about through dialogue”.

#articleoftheday

12/06/2016 KNE

India has one of the most progressive intellectual property laws that manages to balance patent protection and citizen’s rights. It has enabled a generic pharmaceutical industry to thrive. There are increasing signs that Western - especially US - pharmaceutical companies are trying to end India's status of the "world's pharmacy", putting the lives of millions of people in the Global South at stake.

#articleoftheday

02/06/2016 KNE

European governments are increasingly outsourcing hugely complex questions to the people. Often they are pressured by populist movements into referendums the electorate fails to grasp in their entireties. Sometimes governments are even forced into adopting policies that are incoherent with existing bilateral treaties or violating minority rights. However, referendums do not manage to return trust in "governing elites" and reverse increasing political apathy.

#articleoftheday

31/05/2016 KNE

Breaking off a discussion with the Central Council of Muslims, the Central Committee of German Catholics excluding the party form its "Catholics Day" and the deputy leader saying that Germans would rather not live next to footballer Jérôme Boateng. What exactly happened? And is the party drifting further to the right?

#articleoftheday

18/05/2016 KNE

The US is launching a massive crackdown against tax havens even though it attracts large amounts of foreign capital itself. Delaware is home to more companies than people. $226 billion is administered in extremely secretive family trusts in South Dakota. Will Obama be able to end this hypocritical stance?

#articleoftheday

17/05/2016 KNE

In 2015, over one million asylum seekers arrived in Germany and an estimated 800,000 stayed in the country. According to a recent report, in that year the government has spent 20.9 billion euros on refugees, which has prompted many for-profit companies to enter the booming market. However, the ever increasing cost of the migrant crisis is extremely politically laden. The German investigative journalism team CORRECT!V researched the “refugee industry” for half a year.

#articleoftheday

13/05/2016 KNE

According to a newly published report, only 5% of all marriages in India are inter-caste. While the numbers are not necessarily surprising, they do show how important caste still is in contemporary Indian society.

#articleoftheday

12/05/2016 KNE

Jan Böhmermann, the comedian who started a worldwide shitstorm about a poem, has returned from a four week "chillaxing" break. The hashtag of tonight's show was #verafake - how he apparently infiltrated one of Germany's trashiest TV shows "Schwiegertochter gesucht" - "wanted: daughter-in-law" (Vera Int-Veen is the host of the show). Gregor Gysi, long-time leader of the party The Left (Die Linke), was the guest of the 45th episode of Neo Magazin Royale.

#articleoftheday

10/05/2016 KNE

Werner Faymann, Austria’s social democrat chancellor, has resigned yesterday. He famously switched sides in the EU migrant crisis - from one of Angela Merkel’s closest partners to one of her fiercest opponents. However, the shift to the right did not work well with the Austrian voters and the members of his Social Democrat Party (SPÖ). Faymann is the first European leader to resign as a direct consequence of the migrant crisis. What are the implications for other European countries?

#articleoftheday

06/05/2016 KNE

Islam used to be viewed very differently in Western Europe. In the early 20th century, the progressive elites of Germany, the Netherlands, France and Britain were fascinated by the exotic spirituality of Islam. After World War I many Germans were disillusioned by Western civilisation and sought refuge in a spiritual alternative to Christianity - and many saw Islam as an appropriate answer.

#articleoftheday

04/05/2016 KNE

The new law with the long name might change Europe's big city housing crisis. Yet Berlin is different from other major Western European cities. Rents are relatively affordable, even though this might be changing dramatically. In addition to the 40,000 people that move to Berlin on average every year, the city welcomed more than 50,000 asylum seekers and refugees in 2015. Rents rose by 56% between 2009 and 2014. What will this new law change?

#articleoftheday

03/05/2016 KNE

In September 2012, the Alternative für Deutschland, then known as Germany’s “professor’s party”, was founded. It was seen as Germany’s answer to the populist and nationalist shift in European politics. However, it had none of the nasty undertones of the Front National in France or the True Finns. Then the migrant crisis happened and things changed quite dramatically.

#articleoftheday

27/04/2016 KNE

Freedom of speech and expression has become a hot topic in Germany (and throughout Europe) ever since the German satirical TV show extra 3aired the song “Erdowie, Erdowo, Erdogan” on March 17. Turkey summoned the German ambassador to justify the song and demanded that it be deleted. extra 3 reacted by putting the song on YouTube with subtitles in Turkish and English. Then everything escalated.

#articleoftheday

25/04/2016 DLF

Complicated algorithms filter out potential inappropriate content. However, computers cannot determine whether, for example, if naked skin is “indecent” or just some artsy photoshoot. Only humans can make this decision. But who makes these decisions?